Page 68 of The Moonlight Healers

“You see,” Camille said shakily. “I can save Peter. I’m old, but I’m healthy. There’s nothing wrong with me, not physically.”

Camille came and knelt in front of Louise, who felt a creeping sense of dread. She couldn’t fathom a world in which she could do what her grandmother was suggesting, not even for Peter.

Camille’s blue eyes, when they met Louise’s, were full of tenderness. “You think I just made this decision? I made it the minute you told me what happened, when you both were here, sitting on the porch. And I think you know why, Louise. I think you’ve seen it. That I haven’t been quite myself.”

“What are you talking about?” Bobbie joined Camille, sliding onto the floor next to Louise’s legs.

“Even before all of this, I was going to tell you both, soon,” Camille said as she leaned back against the couch. “Your father has known for a few months. My brother. And Jim. I had to tell them both, to plan ahead.”

“Plan ahead for what?” Bobbie asked, anxiety rippling in her voice.

Camille looked at Louise, who felt herself struggle against the truth, even as tiny connections began to fall into place: her grandmother’s unexpected retirement, Jim’s words about a sale. And there were other signs, trivial ones, things she had brushed off for months, slips in her grandmother’s phrasing, or mixed-up names, plans that were forgotten, food left on the stove, all moments she had chalked up to her simply getting older.

Louise didn’t want to put it together, didn’t want it to be true, but she could feel reality rush toward her.

“I went to your grandfather soon after I was given the probable diagnosis in December, the next day actually. To make him my power of attorney, to finalize my will and advanced directives. I had made all these decisions before the doctor told me what I already knew, of course. I made them all when I watched Mama go through it.” She placed her hands in her lap and took a long moment before continuing. “I was always veryclear about what I wanted the end of my life to look like, should it come to this.”

A slow realization dawned on Bobbie’s face. “Dementia?”

Camille nodded. “Same as Mama, more than likely.”

“How long has this been going on?” Bobbie asked.

“It started more than a year ago,” Camille said. “For a long time, I tried to convince myself it was just getting older. It was only little lapses, now and again, some clumsiness, feeling off, emotionally. But then…” She paused and looked down at her hands. “I saw things in myself that reminded me of her.”

Bobbie’s face crumpled. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“What difference would it have made?”

“I could have been here helping you. Making sure you were okay.”

“You have your own life. I would never have let you be my caretaker.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, when I got here?” Louise struggled to formulate her thoughts. She knew there was some right question to ask, some way to sort it all out, prevent what was careening toward them.

“I knew you’d argue with me,” Camille replied. “You’re as stubborn as your mother. But guess what? I’m even more stubborn.”

“Mom, you can’t possibly mean this. You’re not acting rational.”

Camille let out a small laugh. “Barbara, what would a rational response be to this situation exactly?”

“I don’t know.” Bobbie stood and began to pace the room. “There must be something else that can be done. Something in one of Agnes’s old books or…or someone we can talk to. That midwife healer friend of yours who lives in the valley, Naomi or Natalie?”

“Naomi.” She sighed. “Naomi is the first person I called after you guys came here. She knows more about healing than I do,more than even Mama ever did. I told her what I was thinking. She told me it should work.”

Louise’s thoughts were muted as her mother and grandmother talked. When she was little, their combined voices were so soothing, conversations about politics or nursing techniques, gossip over people in town. But right now, the sound only brought her grief.

“There has to be some other way.”

“Barbara.”

“You’re sure that there isn’t a loophole, or someone else, or…”

“Barbara, that’s enough!” Camille’s voice rang out.

Louise looked up, shocked. She had never heard her grandmother raise her voice like that.

“I know what’s ahead of me,” she said. “I watched it with Mama. And I have known it every day since, that I would never want to live the way she lived at the end.” Her chin trembled. “She…she begged me, for months, to let her go. But I was so scared of losing her. It took me so long, too long.” She gazed out the window at the inky blue sky. “I’m not scared, not of death. I’m so much more scared of losing who I am. Of putting you in that position, to have to ask you…of making you shoulder that burden.”

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